I am a proud member of the MacGregor clan and an avid attendee of Central Florida’s Scottish Highland Games (CFSHG) festival each year. If you have never been to a highland games you are missing quite a spectacle. Great food, Excellent brew, superb music, top notch athletic competition, high stepping highland dancing and medieval weaponry demonstrations – I ask you – Who could ask for more?
We’re heading out to the festival this weekend to partake in our annual Scottish pilgrimage. If you were following our Twitter feed this summer you would have noticed that we were up in Antigonish, Nova Scotia for the longest running North American Scottish Highland games. It is only fair to say that as “authentic” as that Antigonish festival is the Central Florida Scottish Highland Games is far more enjoyable. It is hard to peg exactly why but we love that CFSHG serves meat pies, has instruments and clan gear for sale, brings in world class Celtic rock bands like Enter the Haggis to rock the center stage and with Dunedin Brewing in house pouring the best ales it is just hard to compete with no matter how un-authentic a “highland games” may seem amidst the flatland of Florida.
Click here for details and hope to see you there. I’ll be in my McGregor kilt with a baby girl strapped to my chest.
Having been born and raised in Florida and being married to a 5th generation Floridian I’ve always been fascinated with Cracker Culture. I’m not talking about the pejorative term Cracker, but the nickname given to the pioneering families that settled Central Florida. On Sunday the Sentinel published a story titled ”Central Florida’s Towns that Time Forgot” full of images and short narratives about Central Florida’s unique history.
The stories and images reminded me of the growing up years I spent on the Deseret Ranch hunting and fishing along the Econlockhatchee river in east Orange Country with my Father. Walking through the pastures and wetlands of this area I often saw the remnants and traces of the bygone Cracker era. Dilapidated turpentine stills and Cypress mills with their rusted artifacts proved an imagination stirring site for me.
With these haunting memories still a stir I had the good fortune of discovering the Florida Historical Society’s website and their weekly radio magazine Florida Frontiers. A visit to their show’s website offered an archive of truly fascinating Florida history. The show airs on our local public radio station 90.7 WMFE on Thursday’s at 6:30 and you can subscribe to their podcast as well.
I’m seriously excited about exploring their archive and catching the show each week. I hope it continues to stoke my desire to explore Central Florida’s unique history. I’m sure you’ll be seeing other posts about Cracker Culture here in the future. I never thought about A Local Folkus might also showcase the folks of Florida’s past but heck they’re pretty interesting too!
As many of you know Kamrin and I have another blog called Finding America TV where we document our love of hitting the open road. We have traveled through 39 US states and 5 states of Canada with our trusty travel trailer Kodi and filmed the whole thing. So when we heard the nomadic Airstream trekking musical duo Hymn 4 Her being interviewed by Julie Norris on Front Porch Radio we knew we had to see them live.
This duo, well trio if you include their full-time roadie their 3 year old daughter Diver, stopped through Orlando last week to play two gigs. Here is some video I shot of their show at the Audubon Park Community Market hosted at Stardust. Since the K’s were out of town I was flying solo but it turned out that Diver ended up being my table mate for the show. Armed with a coloring book, 32 color box of crayons and wearing a set of noise canceling headphones she proved to be well equipped and content to let her folks do their thing.
Hymn for Her also played at Dandelion for urban sketcher Thomas Thorspecken’s art opening. That is his sketch of their performance above. They will be back Jan 17th at the Copper Rocket’s 2nd Anniversary of their Southern Fried Sunday jams. You can catch them in February at Orlando Brewing as well, so hop over to their website for details and to check out the music video they put together as a tribute to their Airstream’s previous owners – pretty cool.
If you’ve been following the Locavore Movement for any length of time then you will surely be familiar with the name Michael Pollan. Well, thanks to a timely Tweet I caught him being interviewed on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart yesterday. He was promoting his newest book “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual“. In his previous book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” he expounded on the simple mantra “To be healthy, Humans should eat food, not too much and mostly plants“. With such a simple mantra you’d expect a short book. However as the page count grew and as Pollan expounded on the travails of industrial food system I began to realize that his simple mantra was an impregnable ideal.
To that end, to help demystify how to eat ethically, healthfully and to avoid the “edible food like substances” being marketed to us, Pollan has come to our rescue with a pocket sized “eater’s manual.” It is a shame that an eater’s manual is even necessary but when our local grocery store offerings are 85% processed, non-whole food, food substitutes, finding the genuine article can be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. So I’m going to pick the book up tomorrow and will write a proper review once I’ve given it a read, but to tide you over below is his interview on the Daily Show. Enjoy and eat consciously.
Eating locally is more than just buying food that is at the peak of freshness and not shipped cross country from California, more importantly it is about supporting our local food economy, its community and its unique culture. By doing so it becomes normal to know your producers, to build relationship with the local farmers who supply your free-range eggs and organically grown produce and to know that you are getting the highest quality food for your food dollar. By supporting the “local” farmer’s markets like Audubon Park Community Market you are strengthening the bonds that connect each of us to the land from which our food comes and to the caring hands that provided these food stuffs for our consumption.
Slow Food in an effort to champion this vital connection is sponsoring an Eat Local Week January 25th – 31st. Below is an excerpt from their promotional materials for this event. You can be sure Kamrin and I will be fully supporting this week long event and you can expect to see a few write ups and videos on our site about it. So take a look at the excerpt below and let us know in the comments what you are doing to participate in Eat Local Week. Following an excerpt is a video of the mother of America’s Slow Food movement Alice Waters to give you a bit more insight into what Slow Food is all about.
How many wonderful and tasty things get cooked up in a kitchen. Well quite a lot when I’m at the stove, but sometimes the things getting cooked up are ideas. A little over three years ago, Ryan Price and I were sitting at his kitchen table hatching some community building schemes. Lo and behold, 3 years later, Florida Creatives is a fixture of Central Flroidas creative community and we are set to celebrate that fact tonight at 6 pm at the Brooked Bayou downtown.
Florida Creatives happy hours are an incredible melting pot of talent. I’ve always come away with fresh inspiration, a few more creative contacts and with a full belly of gumbo and good beer. Particularly if you are a freelancer or a work-from-home creative, this happy hour is a great way to meet other creative-shut-ins and make inroads to establishing your personal brand in Orlando’s creative community.
As an appetizer of the kind of crazy talent you can find in the Florida Creative members check out the amazing work of Plinio Pinto of GrapeSodaStudio,Inc. I just discovered his work though the Florida Creatives and I his illustrations are seriously “Legend”.
I hope to see you there tonight. Please stop by and introduce yourself to me. Check the About page if you need a picture to know who the heck I am. Cheers.
Details: Sunday, December 20, 2009, 10am-7pm at stardust video and coffee (1842 E. Winter Park Rd).
Ryan Price of Florida Creatives has been telling me to get out to the Grandma Party since it began. Well this year we are finally going to make it. Ryan has posted some videos over at Orlando Scene if you want to see what you’ve been missing today and what you can still enjoy if you get off the couch and get going. Below is just one of the interesting videos Ryan shot at the last Grandma Party.
For the uninitiated this is what you can expect.
Over 40 local arts and crafters, musicians and independent businesses will transform the parking lot in front of Stardust Video and Coffee into a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) extravaganza at the Grandma Party Bazaar. The event will feature work from local fashion designers, bookbinders, painters, knitters, silversmiths, vintage dealers, bakers and print makers, as well as live art, custom songs written and recorded while you wait and more! WPRK 91.5 FM presents live music throughout the day. Local artist Doug Rhodehamel will create something magically spectacular for the event, while Justin Luper will create a large scale sheet-fort installation indoors for tarot readings and a special surprise after dark.
A couple weeks ago I reported about the thought provoking artwork of local artist Jennifer Farhat. She has produced another locavore inspired instillation on the shores of Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, FL. On top of that she how has a shiny new home for work on the web called Know The Roots. Besides serving as a portfolio of her locavore artwork, the site also provides a great primer for why we all believe supporting an organic local food economy is so critical to the health of our families and the health of our nation.
As many of you know my favorite place to study is at the Winter Park Library. Well during my studying for finals I saw a flyer for a free Christmas concert put on by Jubal’s Kin. Surprise surprise surprise. These were the three young musicians that Julie Norris had on Front Porch Radio either the week before or after I was on.
Being a lover of traditional Bluegrass, roots and gospel I put these three on my radar the second I heard them on the radio. They have a great sound and their take on the genre is fresh and inspiring. So….we made it a point as a family to drop into the Library today to catch their show. We had a front row seat and our daughter was clapping away enraptured by the sound of live acoustic music.
I’ve cut together a little video that I shot with the Flip to give you guys an idea about the kind of music Jubal’s Kin plays. The trio was joined today by three other musicians, but their core group is made up of siblings Roger, Gailanne and Jeffrey Amundsen ages 21,15 and 11 respectively.
They’ve got a fair few awards under their belt already and with an engaging stage presence, some hot licks and a wonderful synergy, I expect great things from these young musicians. It is always a pleasure to discover new music, but when it is in your own backyard is that much sweeter.
Just subscribed to the blogs that were awarded top honors in their respective niches at the recent Tweet Up at the Enzian. Had followed a few prior to the Orlando TweetUp but was pleased to fine a fair few that I had never even heard of. That’s what happens when poopy diapers become the most pressing issue in your day. Anyhow I’m eager to get acquainted with the wonderful blogs and I’d encourage you to check them our and honor them by subscribing.
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Having been born and raised in Florida and being married to a 5th generation Floridian I’ve always been fascinated with 
With these haunting memories still a stir I had the good fortune of discovering the 
If you’ve been following the 
Just subscribed to the blogs that were awarded top honors in their respective niches at the recent 
